Fire Pit

It seemed like a simple project and how else would I ever justify all the tools I have. Consequently, when the main “bowl” of the fire pit rusted out, I saw an opportunity to put some of those tools to use.

Let’s face it, given my past record, restoring something others might have thrown out, just seems to be the way I roll.

Of course in the tradition of Tim Allen’s character on Tool Time, I decided to add “more power” to the restoration by starting with sheet steel that would be better referred to as plate steel.

It was easy enough to cut it with the help of a plasma cutter but took adding heat from an Oxy-Acetylene to make the bends. Who needs a gym when you one can over spec sheet metal thickness? 

It was a challenge getting a large and repeatedly heated piece of steel to remain flat at its perimeter. Most of the bending machines I own really couldn’t do much to this gauge of sheet steel so having to hand bend it added to the difficulty of keeping it flat and symmetrical.

I think the end result looks great and certainly it works as well if not better than the original piece. Unfortunately the screen “lid” now needs to be remade and for that I bought stainless steel mesh and sheet. 

Stay tuned…

There were some issues with the original screen that came with this fire-pit. It was made of expanded carbon steel mesh and between the elements and the heat of fires it became rather rusty.  

On this "new and improved" version I decided to go with stainless steel (time will tell if this was a better choice).

The other improvement I decided to make was to increase the side walls angle to almost vertical and to make the overall height taller. The theory there was to move the screen out of the flames and hopefully to extend its life by reducing the heat it saw.

As with most of my projects, this one is not 100% done. The handle for picking it up (both when hot or cold) was located at the top of the screen directly in the path of the flames. The handles I will be adding will be located kitty-corner to each other, outboard of the flames as well as having an option to use a  ring centred on the top, for lifting it off with a poker.